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10/18/2010
Gallagher advises future Bucks; we advise you to hear what else she's said
After saying that she sees nothing "substantively wrong" in U.S. Senate candidate Ken Buck's answer that being gay is essentially a choice (with a possibly birth component, like alcoholism), professional backer of marital bias Maggie Gallagher posits the following as a suggested answer for any politico who may be presented with the same "choice" question in the future:
“I don’t think anyone knows for sure how an orientation develops. I do think we know how sex happens: People choose to do it, or not, according to their personal moral value systems. Twin studies are increasingly pointing away from genetics as the major explanation for same-sex attraction, and the answer to the question of how orientation develops may turn out to be different for different people, and for men and women. But we can safely leave the debate to scientists who are competent to conduct it. I hope we can all agree that we are all responsible for our own sexual behavior, whatever our orientation, and that in a free society under current conditions people are not going to all agree on the underlying moral values.”
-Maggie [National Review Online]
Typical PR speak. But the thing is: Maggie has already given far more insight into her true feelings than she'd ever admit on the mainstream conservative forum that is National Review Online. She did so on Janet Parshall's radio show, where she recited the same kinds of lines about people choosing to have sex, but (a) with all of it framed around Janet's "ex-gay" setup, and (b) with a direct mention from Maggie that she finds homosexuality to be "an unfortunate thing":
8/9/10:
*AUDIO SOURCE: In The Market with Janet Parshall -- 8/9/10 [Moody Radio]
Or there was Maggie's August '09 appearance on the same show, when the National Organization For Marriage chairman again invoked her own sense of biblical morality in claiming that both the Iowa Supreme Court's decision and, by extension, gays are not only condemned by Leviticus but are also "striking at the heart" of Genesis:
8/09:
*AUDIO SOURCE: Janet Parshall's America
Then check out Maggie's June '08 appearance on the "Catholic Answers Live" radio show, where she discussed the "several kinds of sins" that committed gay couples are supposedly committing. Or actually in this instance, it wasn't only same sex couples that Mags went after -- she brought all straight supporters of marriage equality into the sinful mix too:
(click to play audio clip)
*Source: Catholic Answers Live -- 6/30/08
Plus there's the fact -- the FACT! -- that Maggie regularly surrounds herself with a movement that's never met a piece of junk science that they won't twist so that it sounds as thoughtful as Einstein's (like Maggie's mentioned twin studies, for instance, which are constantly twisted by groups like NARTH in ways that ignore the perfectly scientific reasons why even monozygotic twins sometimes have discordant sexualities, the anecdotal elements that could skew results, the hormonal "activator" factor, the fact that things like lefthandedness also don't hold 100% concordance, etc.).
So it's understandable why Maggie would want to craft the perfect non-answer: One that stops short of revealing any sort of substance while still hitting certain dog whistles that cede no ground to the vast majority of LGBT people who experience no sense of "choice" about their attractions, capacities, and desires. Ms. Gallagher is a political person with a political goal, and too much freeform thought might actually break the conversation beyond the "protect marriage" talking point machine!
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